@anaray - Hugs, and please point them to this article for awareness. Why The Asian American Students Lost Their Case Against Harvard (But Should Have Won)
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I have to disagree with this, as a dual-primary care doc family: many cream-of-the crop med students choose non-surgical fields like internal med or pediatrics. All but the bottom 1/5th or so of residencies in these fields fill. The ones that donât tend to be in less desirable locations or less well known hospitals or just newer programs. Then there are some one-year internships in non-primary care that also do not fill. Every person in my med school and my husbandâs got into a residency in their chosen field. It is very rare not to match in your field for the vast majority of US med schools. We know docs all over the country in different fields and none failed to match in their field. Once in residency such as internal medicine, then you chose by the end whether to do subspecialty (ie gastroenterologist) or primary care(internist). Even then itis absolutely not true that the âcreamâ pick specialties. Many many docs I know were picked to be Chief residents , so were at the top of their residency program, yet also chose to do primary care (general Ob-gyn, general peds, general medicine). Others chose subspecialties. You cannot make generalizations about a chosen field and the talent pool of docs. Also, primary care makes plenty of money. Most of us make more than some general surgeons do, especially if those surgeons are in highly-sought after areas: ie Mass General/boston area. Working in private practice primary care commonly makes 50-100% more than some academic-hospital based specialists. Really. I do not know any docs who have any problems being in the top 5%-7%of income and many are higher. It is an extremely lucrative field, and I say this after paying off dual med school loans over a decade plus. Besides all the $ talk, primary care is a calling, not a financial decision, as are other specialties.
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It is interesting to me whether this is guaranteed (or even highly likely) to be true going forward. The proportion of US GDP going to medical care is high and increasing, and a lot of that goes to pay those âlucrativeâ salaries. If there are sharp cuts in reimbursement rates (eg Medicare for All) to reduce healthcare costs then salaries would surely be impacted going forward. Then what will happen to all those enormous loans?
Who knows? But the field has been through many many ups and downs in reimbursement over decades and yet still the career remains popular. We heard alll about how we would make less with managed care going forward, and salaries in the 2000s were less proportionally than the roaring 80s, yet the less $ ended up not being a game-changer as far as deterring bright college students away from pre-med. It is not a top 0.1-0.5% job for most docsâpeople who seek that wealth do not pick medicine.
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I agree with this, but I think some students/med school aspirationals do not understand the financials/return of primary care (especially if one graduates with $300k+ in loans), not to mention many believe they are top of the top and will match to neurosurgery, or vascular surgery, or other high salary specialties.
Maybe they donât. Again dual primary care household and we paid off high 200s-k in debt (we paid around $3000 a month for 8 yrs, less the first 4 yrs out) and so did the majority of our friends. And med school isnt like thatâthere is no âtop of the topâ are neurosurgeons. I know 2 surgeons that graduated near the bottom of med school and yet matched well (failed some first yr classes which is very rare,and got paired with tutors to retake, etc) Med school isnt a gpa game like college or high school. You arenât sorted into fields that way, you self -sort based on interest and the different faculty programs help every student get where they need to be to match(which isnt about gpa).
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My D is considering med school, so I did my usual deep dive looking for answers. Iâm fortunate to have a number of MDs in my family including some that teach at med schools. I was able to leverage their contacts to have conversations with a lot of informed people including admissions people.
First, the med school section of CC is incredible. There are a couple of amazing posters over there that can and will help you understand the real world of med school admissions.
There are so many dated hot takes out there about med school admissions. Most pre med students believe them and then are disappointed by their acceptances or lack of acceptances.
Getting into med school is about half GPA and MCAT, and the other half is a mix of volunteering, leadership, communication skills, shadowing, and research. You canât check the box because there will be interviews and they will ask tough questions and then tough follow up questions.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
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Thank you! It is so difficult to hear that we are favored and on the other hand, it is the most difficult race to be born as for college admission. Nice to see that we have some support from everybody.
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Thank you! We are in the same boat. It is so difficult to hear that we are favored and on the other hand, it is the most difficult race to be born as for college admission.
Lots of high salaries in health care administration, some even higher than doctors. IMO, if salaries need to be cut, it should be those first.
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Final update
After agonizing for a few days, S21 chose Chicago yesterday. At the end of the day, two things clinched it for him: Chicagos ranking/prestige in his intended major of math and the schoolâs general reputation in academics. Finding kids like him on Discord really helped as well. He sent a nice letter to Duke explaining his withdrawal.
On to prepping for Chicago in the fall.
S23 is happy because he really wanted to avoid going to the same school as his brother and really likes Duke.
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Sorry if you misunderstood what I was saying as that was not my intention. I wasnât saying that only the cream of the crop going into specialties because of course plenty do. What I was saying is that if youâre not at a top medical school or the top of your class (which is the same as cream of the crop) then you will not be able to match into these residencies and have no choice but to go into primary care medicine. You went to Duke, I am not sure if you also went to medical school at Duke, but if you did, then you will have gotten into a residency most likely at any program in just about any field. But someone who goes to a less prestigious medical school, if theyâre not at the top of their class will absolutely not be able to get into the top surgical residencies. My former husband also went to a top medical school where everyone could pick their residencies and most if not all were matched at their first choice. Where he wound up (not surgical) the hospital had many Top 5 surgical programs in the country and the residents were all from well regarded medical schools. Thatâs just how it was. The primary care programs - peds, internal medicine, family practice, psych, etc. while good programs had residents from both great medical schools, average medical schools and FMGs. The quality of the residents was quite varying.
Maybe where you are primary care docs make plenty of money, but where we are they are not. If you have 2 Doctors in a family in primary care as in your case, maybe then it is easy to pay off the debt because you are both bringing in a salary greater than other professions, but when you have one spouse in their 30âs with over 250k in debt and the other is a non-physician, it is not easy to pay $3k/month in debt, medical mal-practice, a mortgage, pre-school, camp, put money away for kids college, etc. Medicine has changed significantly here. Small practices are being bought up by big hospitals and many primary care Drâs are being forced to either go off on their own and leave those big hopsital groups and not accept medicare insurance or just become concierge Drâs which is become a big thing here. The most lucrative primary care Drâs these days actually seem to be child and adult psychiatrists who donât take insurance.
My ex sister in law and her husband are also both physicians. One is an ob/gyne an the other a geriatrician. They practiced in Boston but due to the outrageous cost of his medical mal-practice and their medical school loans they found they couldnât afford to stay there. They ultimately moved out of state, so they could have a better quality of life, pay off their loans and actually have money left over. So no, it is not lucrative for everyone.
The bottom line though back to the original comment is that for those that want to go into a specialty, they still need to be the top of their class at an avg medical school or go to a top medical school or they will not have any chance at matching in those programs. I know plenty of people that went to âgoodâ medical schools but since they were not at the top of their classes, couldnât match in the progams they wanted. They still ended up in decent residencies but had to change the specialties. For some it worked out much better than they couldâve hoped for and lucrative, but I would really hope people are not choosing a specialty in medicine for the money, although unfortunately based on some of the medical type of businesses I see around here, I know thatâs not always the case.
Omg, for sure. I have a friend whoâs husband works for BCBS and I canât even tell you how good he has it. Nicest guy, but what they pay those guys is ridiculous.
The other issue those with the insurance companies and administration is there is a lot of incompetence there in there lower level jobs. If people donât understand how to read EOBs then thatâs a big problem. I canât tell you how often theyâre wrong and when you try to call about them, the people in those lower level jobs are clueless. We once had a company pay out twice for something for my son. They paid it in my ex husbandâs name and my sonâs. We told them they overpaid. They didnât believe us. Told us it wasnât a mistake. Yada yada. Bottom line they wouldnât accept that they made a mistake and we couldnât even get them to take the money back. It was like $400. SMH. Then there are the times you get overbilled. Thatâs a hospital doing it, but still. The incompetence in the insurance field on both ends, billing, insurance, etc. must cost consumers millions each year.
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Congratulations! Heâll love it here. The weather, maybe not so much - especially coming from CR lol. Yesterday it was in the 80âs today itâs freezing, in the 40âs. Iâve had enough of this.
Itâs such a great place to visit too!!
@anaray And usually in my head I give extra big hugs to south Asian parents (and their kids) who have kids who want to be CS/EECS or meds. Iâm Viet but one of my mentees is south Asian. I was going to help that kid get into EECS come hell or high water. Thankfully, one of his dream schools is ârace blind,â although Iâm so skeptical that UCs canât see studentâs ethnicity.
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I donât think the UCs can see individual kidsâ ethnicities but they know the demographics of the schools and pick up hints in essays and ECs. And while they are not allowed to make decisions based on that info, I think they do in a roundabout way.
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I think we will just have to agree to disagree. I will respond and clarify only because it might help parents who have kids interested in medicine: the examples I was citing were from a middle-US med school, definitely avg or just below. Faculty fought harder for their students in some ways than Duke med did for us: where the students ârankedâ after the regular coursework did not determine the specialty at all, it was student-sorted. The specialties all draw different personalities; it isnât about gpa. They all matched. Did they match at some top-hospital in Boston? No. But that doesnât matterâa match in your specialty is a match! There are boatloads of surgical residencies across the country that train well. And for whatever it is worth, many of the years we were paying offthe debt, we still made under 250k combined and we started at far less than that. It is doable; I encourage others not to dissuade young people from medicine for debt reasons or fears they will be blocked out of their dream specialty.
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I like how you say âhints in essaysâ etc as youâre probably right. Sometimes even if one tries to fade into the background you just canât. Things you write about, clubs youâre in, sports you play, instruments youâve played, summer jobs, summer camp, leadership activities, etc. Itâs obvious.
I remember when my daughter was going through sorority rush and putting together all her resume stuff and getting letters of rec. The whole process as her huge Southern school is a big deal. A friend of mine who also had a kid there at the time said my daughter should be prepared because she will get cut immediately from some sororities because sheâs Jewish. My dumb response was âhow would any of them know weâre jewish?â. I wasnât even thinking about that. My friend (who had written one of the LORâs for her) said, because itâs all over her resume. Some of her volunteer work, a womenâs mentorship project she did, a community service trip she did, duh. The only thing not Jewish is her name. But my friend was right. It was glaringly obvious.
My son however, when I looked at his resume, since that was in the back of my mind from 2 years ago, his community service was all based in other groups, and none were Jewish ironically, so not one thing would lead anyone to think he was Jewish. In his case, nothing showed it. But the flip side is he plays a sport that is considered an expensive sport so who knows if thatâs something that when looked at upon by colleges is looked at with disapproval or judged differently?
Ultimately, even with all the need blind stuff, race blind, etc. there are still ways to take a guess on things and Iâm sure they try or get that sense.
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@2Devils What you say about debt and donât let it be a barrier to a kid going to med school is what I hear all of my doctor friends say, too. Part of the mom in me says, âGosh, how will I help to pay for $300-400k?!â Our MD friends all say, âDonât even give it a thought if they can get in, they can get loans. They will figure it out after they graduate.â We have several friends who are family practitioners and some in high-paying specialities who are still paying off their loans in their late 40âs. They said theyâre not worried because itâs such a low monthly amount and the interest rates they get is so low. We have friends who paid off their loans after 5-10 years like your family did without feeling like they lived a deprived life, either. This is very reassuring since I have adjusted to just worrying about undergrad support 
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If you donât mind me asking where is your daughter in school and how has she liked it?
We are Jewish and from the east coast and my daughter is seriously considering UGA. Main concern is just feeling out of place there. She plans to rush as well.
Any advice appreciated!